Bonnie and Clyde
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: "We were two people straight out of a legend, you and I." — in which Lily and Snape are smooth criminals. AU, of course. Warnings for breaking the rules and other illicit activities.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: This is a muggle-ised Bonnie and Clyde AU.  
**

Written for the Potter Games Competition "Round One: Severus Snape"; Cinema Competition "Fight Club"; Duct Tape Competition "Purple Zebra"; AU challenge "Bonnie and Clyde AU"; Your Favourite Hogwarts House Bootcamp [GRYFFINDOR] "13. blood"; Twelve Days of Christmas Challenge "8. crime"

If you don't understand the POV shifts, they are as follow: (i) Snape - first person (ii) narrator - third person (iii) Lily - first person.

Warnings for . . . well, I don't really know what to warn for. Triggering things are in this fic but they're mentioned really briefly so I don't know how to pinpoint and label them.

8 March 2014. Word Count:

**There was so much pain that I forgot what pain felt like.**

* * *

**Bonnie and Clyde  
**

[-]

**i. ready.**

We were two people straight out of a legend, you and I. Life was a game of Cops and Robbers and toeing the line between wrong and right. I pulled you onto the wrong side of the train tracks, and you loved me enough to stay with me and disguise your heart of gold into a villain's body.

You were just an innocent small-town girl born in Rowena, Texas who knew nothing of prison cells or running away from life. Your doe eyes clashed with your fiery personality, which was just the way I liked it. I taught you how to shoot a gun and become a gangster; you showed me how to love and create something beautiful out of dark, twisted words. You always wore _his_ ring, a reminder of a reality we were trying to escape, but we both knew it was me you truly loved.

We met at the Shrieking Shack which was a run-down house owned by a mutual friend of ours. You were mixing hot chocolate in the kitchen when I happened to stop by. I don't remember much else except that my heart was yours ever since we introduced ourselves to the other that day.

It was meant to be, Lily. I know you only joined me on the run from the law out of love and loyalty - why else would a prim and proper girl become a felon's partner in crime? And, love, I meant to keep you safe. I meant to protect you from our imminent death.

I'm sorry that I couldn't save you from the gunfire.

I'm sorry that our names became immortalised in a legend made for heroes.

**ii. aim.**

He was born with his face shoved into the very dirt that always seemed to surround those who were poor. From a very young age, Severus Snape learnt that life simply wasn't fair. There were those who were unjustly privileged and who were practically funded by the federal state, and then there were people like him who were struggling to survive yet they received no help or aid from the government.

School was a nightmare. No one wanted to sit near or talk to the greasy-haired unkempt boy who were shabby over-sized secondhand clothes. Snape didn't understand why he seemed to be isolated from everyone when, in fact, he was surrounded by a sea of strangers. He craved attention in the same way a plant hungrily devours sunlight, but all the other kids were weeds who were bigger and stronger than he was. They blocked out the light and beat him back down into the earth.

Snape's childhood toughened him up and turned him into a cold, callous man. He quickly learned that violence was the only way for a person to survive in such a bloodthirsty world. He built up a reputation made of prison bars that guarded him from the law. Nothing was safe when it came to Snape - he stole cars, robbed stores, and did not return anything that he 'borrowed'. He and his band of thieves ruled their corner of the world. They called themselves the Death Eaters and were notorious criminals the Texan law desperately wanted to apprehend.

Snape tried not remember the first time he was sent to prison, but the memory haunted him in his weakest moments. He'd been convicted of something so ridiculous and trivial - who turns rental cars in on time, anyway? - that his punishment and what he endured in prison had stemmed his hatred of the law. Whenever Snape closed his eyes, he could still hear the satisfying snap of the inmate's neck and the bruises that blossomed in a garden of colour over his dead body. Perhaps death had been an easy exit for the inmate who had sexually abused and raped Snape, but at least his murder had been by Snape's hands. Revenge fuelled Snape's rage against the corrupted law system. Life was about justice, and Snape would dole out justice to those who had wronged him.

.:.

James Potter was everything she had ever wanted. Lily always had a weakness for naughty boys, and the mischievous delinquent with the raven black hair and glinting hazel eyes reeled her in one smile at a time. She dropped out of high school and they were married fourteen days before Lily's sixteenth birthday. It caused quite a scandal: the class valedictorian eloping with the boy who spent more time in juvenile detention than out. Lily didn't mind, though. She was a romantic and firm believer in true love, and she never regretted her choices or viewed them as mistakes.

Even when James lived in a prison cell more than he lived in their house, she believed that their love would prevail. Even when they split amicably and did not divorce, she continued to wear her wedding ring as a reminder of James. It shackled her to the past and reminded Lily of the life they could have lived.

(Sometimes, Snape pretended that it was his ring on her finger instead of Potter's.)

.:.

"We're not here to become famous," Snape addressed the Death Eaters at their first meeting. "We're not here to get rich. We're here to fuck with the Texas prison system that fucked with us first. Got it?"

.:.

They started out small and robbed supermarkets and petrol stations. Snape's main goal was to get their name out in public and collect enough money and firepower to liberate the Azkaban prison he'd been sent to for his first indictment. Snape didn't care so much for instilling mass public fear or world domination - he just wanted to screw with the law that had screwed him over.

The Death Eaters never managed to liberate Azkaban but their small robberies had a high success rate. Other criminals in the Dallas area started seeking to ally themselves with the Death Eaters, but Snape immediately sent them away. _He_ personally selected those to join him. Death Eaters didn't choose the thug life; the thug life chose them.

.:.

Lily was the leader of the Death Eater's first failed mission. She and Carrow had been trying to steal guns from a hardware store but the clumsy son-of-a-bitch had set off a security trip wire as they were leaving.

"I'm sorry," she said once she had been released from her trial, for she had set back the Death Eater's timeline by a solid two months. They would have to wait a substantial amount of time for the police to stop breathing down their necks, and Lily knew that Snape despised idly wasting time.

He smiled tightly at her - how could he ever truly be mad at his love? "We're partners, Lily," Snape told her. "We're in this together."

"Yeah?"

Snape kissed the top of her head. "Yeah. If you die first, I promise that you will not have to wait long for me to follow you into the afterlife."

That was the closest he had ever been to verbally expressing his love for Lily Potter.

.:.

Lily and Snape were a lethal team. They were so in-tune with each other and their gun habits that the other Death Eaters knew better than to mess with the duo when in the middle of a hit-and-strike lest they wanted to get caught in the gunfire. Lily had the better aim but Snape was quicker with his rounds. Together, they fatally wounded those who pursued them or wanted to apprehend them for their crimes.

In the Death Eaters' leisure time, they hung around in motels or diners and kept low profiles around small towns. Snape taught Lily how to make smoke rings and he indulged her consequent addiction to cigarettes. She exploited her love of photography and forced him to be her model in every city and town they travelled to. However, her documentation of where they had been combined with Snape's deliberate precision and pattern used to determine their victims and locations would prove to be the Death Eaters' ultimate downfall.

**iii. fire.**

It all happened so fast. We were on our way to the Malfoy's so Lucius could meet up with his parents for their traditional Sunday dinner. I do remember seeing the Louisiana state border sign flash by in the rearview mirror before the all-too familiar sound of the _pop-pop-pop _which signified the barrage of bullets. Forty-eight hours ago, the Death Eaters had managed to liberate Azkaban, just like you had always wanted. But Rookwood, the lead man on the team, had been trigger-happy and the manslaughter attracted the attention of the Texas law enforcement.

We fled the state immediately but Lucius begged for us to drop him off at his parent's house. He was truly Southern to the core and could not abandon his family's Sunday tradition even in a life-or-death situation. I don't know why you agreed to fulfil his wishes, but you brought him along with us as we sought out refuge away from Texas.

You were speeding down a rural road as if your life depended on it. The morning sun was hot on my skin and I was tempted to roll my windows down to enjoy the summer breeze. We had just made it into Louisiana, and I remember thinking how peculiar that single arrangement of bushes off to the left side seemed when -

_pop-pop-pop! pop-pop-pop!_

You looked at me just as the bullet tore through your skull. "Duck, love," you managed to whisper out and your dark eyes stared straight into my green ones as the light faded out of your world.

I screamed. I screamed I screamed I screamed. The car was out of control without your hands steering anymore and there was blood everywhere and then I saw it. I saw the bullet that was meant for me in the split-second before it embedded itself in my heart.

And there was pain. There was so much pain. More bullets bit at my face and my chest and stomach and it was as if the metal of the car wasn't even there shielding us from the onslaught of gunfire. There was so much pain that I forgot what pain felt like.

_Ready, aim, fire_.

And that was when my heart exploded.

[-]


End file.
